German split-brim hat – Historical Sew Monthly February 2017

My German Renaissance Split-Brim hat with grey ostrich feathers worn with my black velveteen Gollar and my Cranach gown costume.

In mid-January the SCA barony I live in celebrated the step-up of a new Baron and Baroness, who have German personas. To recognize their elevation in a symbolic kind of way, several of us planned to add German elements to our existing costumes. As I wasn’t entirely sure if I could pull together a new German gown in time for the coronet, I decided to start with accessories. First the Gollar I already posted about, and next a new hat.

Celebration – headwear

Complete “celebration” Italian outfit including the padded roll hat, teal figured velvet overdress, and green silk underdress with sleeves

To top off (ha ha) my new Italian Renaissance costume, I needed headwear. I looked at a few different options:

• I could use the Reta I already made – it fits well and is correct for the outfit I’m making.
• I can go without any headwear at all – many of the portraits show women without headwear.
• I could finish off the netted headdress I started, which is about half done, with the most challenging parts done.. but it’s rather unimpressive….
• I could try something new and totally different…. which would require drafting a new pattern and starting from scratch…

.. so of COURSE with 2 weeks to go before the event, and NONE of the garments completed yet, I opted to go for the fourth option.

Henin in the style of the Woodville portrait

For Caterina’s elevation, I’m helping a friend of hers to make a new outfit. This is based off the dress of Elizabeth Woodville, and the outfit includes a hat (which coordinates with the collar and cuffs from the dress, but is not the same fabric according to the portrait…)

Direct link from Art.uk

From the portrait, the hat appears to be a henin with a butterfly veil. I don’t know if the recipient would do the veil, so I’m focusing just on the henin. It seems to have a very shaped band at the face, and only a VERY slight taper to the crown, so that’s what I’m going to try to make.

Using the portrait as reference to develop the henin pattern

I used the portrait when drafting the pattern for the henin. The hat sits further back on the head, so I measured her head at the hairline rather than the crown, made a band to that measurement, and then at centre-front added the front dip. I’ll be wiring this, and hopefully can slightly curve it to her head, which should help keep the hat on. I made it fairly narrow, but perhaps slightly thicker than the portrait (?) so that I can fit a tiny comb or loops for bobby pins in there to help keep it on her head.

Next I sketched in the curve upwards, and then slashed ever 2″ over the centre front and towards the back, and overlapped the pieces by 1/8 of an inch for a VERY small taper.

Istanbul: Tarpus

Complete Tarpus with the Hirka

The third item I made for my Ottaman costume was a hat – the Tarpus, described from my overview as:

“Tarpus: tall pointed or pillbox hat”

I spent a fair amount of time looking at different hat styles, trying to figure out what kind of hat I wanted to make. There was a pillbox hat with a scarf over it, the scarf worn alone with a headband, a chunky hat, a tall pillar hat, and then also a super-crazy hat that I would LOVE to make….

German hats – first attempts

Tellerbarret – German platter hat

On May 17 I published my entry for the Historical Sew Monthly May 2016 challenge – a pair of German hats (worn together). I’ve been pretty busy with a few different things so I didn’t get to the longer post about these hats until now.

Goldhaube and Tellerbarret worn with a mundane sweater (iphone photo)

I was inspired to work on these hats because the the (SCA) Royal Progress is Cologne for Silverwolf 2016. With this in mind, I wanted to attempt to make my first German costume. While I’m strongly attracted to the Cranach-style gowns, I thought that they might be too fitted for me to accomplish right now on short notice (since I would need a hand with the fitting). Instead I opted for the Landsknecht style, which nicely worked with the “holes” theme of the May Historical Sew Monthly challenge.

Like my Byzantine costume, which also had a short deadline and my Istanbul costume (likewise, short deadline) I didn’t do in-depth research for this costume; instead starting with Pinterest.